Jaane Tu....Ya Jaane Naa

After a hiatus of four months, I finally watched a movie. When I say, "I watched a movie", I mean watching a movie in a theatre. When you watch a movie from a CD, you don't actually see or understand what the director wants to put forth, instead its what you interpret from the hazy images and a speech lag of 15 mins. (See, I am paid by film producers to protest against piracy)

Anyways, lets come to the point. Last week I watched 'Jaane Tu....Ya Jaane Naa', and it made me feel better. Although, the movie does not have any new story to say, but the fresh look and innocence of Aditi and Jay Singh Rathore, impressed me. The supporting characters, specially Amit (Aditi's brother), have also put on a good show. The movie is well paced, smooth and has got the right songs at right places. Full marks to Abbas Tyrewalla. But one thing, which I think needs mention is that, had it not been for Aamir Khan, I don't think the movie would have done what it has done. The very mention of Aamir Khan doubles the chances of a movie to make it big. This is what branding means and I think we have a good case at our hands for the B-School marketing folks. Anyways, let me not divulge into business but coming back to the movie, I think Imraan Khan deserves a pat on his back for his potrayal of a non-violent Rajput.
All in all a good chilled out flick.

Coming up next is "Rock On"....

Taare Zameen Par: Darsheel Safary

One man who has ben the bastion of perfection in Bollywood is Aamir Khan. Be it QSQT, Lagaan, DCH, RDB or Taare Zameen Par Aamir Khan has always impressed the classes as well masses by his excellent performance and approach to movie making. And hats off to him for making a movie like Taare Zameen Par.

But this time around it is someone else who has stolen the show. Yes, the kid, Darsheel Safary. What a performance!! I think his performance was a far better performance than ShahRukh's in Chak De or any other actor this year. But kudos to Aamir Khan for directing the movie so brilliantly. Though he had an excellent script written by Amol Gupte, but there have been umpteen examples of great stories transforming into ordinary movies in Bollywood, only because of the director's "wish" to make it his way and not the way the story demands.

I was going through an article published in "The Hindu" from where I got to know some interesting facts about the movie. Amole Gupte and Reeta Bhatia, the duo who concieved the story, had worked on it for seven long years. It all started from a small one page story by Kurusowa, a Japanese movie-maker who could never develop an interest towards studies and thus started concentrating on art. Though he was not dyslexic, but it gave Amole and Reeta some food for thought and they started looking out for answers to the question, "Why some kids simply cannot concentrate on studies whereas they are brilliant in some other fields?" Dyslexia, was one of the reasons and they started building a story keeping that as the central theme. Even after finalising the story, it took them one and a half years to find the kid ( Darsheel), who would play the role of Ishaan. Amole, Reeta and Aamir conducted numerous workshops and they studied the behaviour of around four to five hundred nine to ten year olds. This is how they found our new "superstar", Darsheel. Hope, by now you guys must have understood, how a great movie is made and how much of devotion it takes.

The theme of the movie was so pertinent, I think every parent can relate to it. Today everyone wants a winner in his/her family and this in turn leads to burdenising the children with their own unfulfilled dreams. But what if a kid buckles under the load?? What if his dreams and his parents' dreams don't match??